Here are some strategies for engineers & engineering managers to build a more diverse pool of candidates from which to hire.

Understand different kinds of diversity: Diversity is a catch-all term and it’s worth considering what you are thinking of when you think diversity: Race? Nationality? Gender? Sexuality? Neurodiversity? People with non-traditional work backgrounds? First-generation college students?

Start as early as possible: If you have diverse people on your team from day one, these people will help build your team’s culture & practices and it will be easier to create an environment that supports and attracts diverse candidates in the long run. When I interview, a manager who has a diverse team appeals to me because it means the manager and the team are more likely to value & have experience working with diverse people.

Network: Find people in underrepresented groups and ask them if they know any folks who might be interested in joining your team.

Reach out to groups: Find lists/meetups/Slack groups for underrepresented groups and contact them!

Reach out to people directly: Send 1:1 emails rather than blasting mailing lists.

Meet people & groups face-to-face: Attend these groups and gatherings in person! It’s much more meaningful when you and your engineers take the time to attend these groups in person — so few people do this that this will surely make your team stand out. Even better is if you have teammates who regularly attend and/or are members of these groups. Recognizing and making it easy for people to do this can help!

Know & explain why you are interested in diversity in your job listings: In your job descriptions, explicitly state that your team values having a diversity of perspectives and lived experience. Explain why diversity is important — this is all about showing that your team makes diversity a priority rather than just trying to hire for diversity as a nice-to-have for diversity’s sake. It makes all the difference for a candidate if they know that their manager/team will go the extra mile to make sure they are successful.

Write inclusive job descriptions: Scrub your job post of gendered pronouns. Use language such as “preferred experience, but not required.” This article explains more about how to do this.

For example, most teams would say that they value gender diversity, but it’s one thing to pay lip service and another to go through the effort of unconscious bias training, dealing with the possibility of having to give people uncomfortable feedback, redesigning hiring practices, adding stork parking, and proactively-checking that team events appeal to people of all genders.

What did I get out of attending Recurse Center?

Made awesome new friends! Recursers are people passionate about programming from all over the world. Because RC is a retreat, it was more intimate than a conference.

Reconnected with my love of programming!

Worked on side projects in a supportive environment: I learned so much more than I would have working on side projects at home just via conversations and being exposed to random people’s enthusiasms

Joined a wonderful supportive, diverse community: There’s a Zulip for RC alumni for staying connected afterward and there’s Never Graduate Week every year for alumni.

Exposed myself to positive engineering culture: RC has an engineering culture to aspire to and proves that this kind of programming environment is possible

Visited NYC

Got perspectives outside of the Silicon Valley start-up scene

Learned a lot about different programmers’ perspectives:

Who might enjoy attending Recurse Center?

Lots of people who love programming! Here’s some specific situations where RC might be a great option (by no means a complete list).

People who want to take some time off to work on a passion project e.g. video game, data analysis project, etc.

Also summer interns & new graduates looking to take some gap months

People burned out on their industry jobs who want to reconnect with their love of programming

People who are seeking diverse programming friends

People who are just starting out and exploring the programming landscape

Tips for future Recursers

Getting the most out of RC as a hardware-leaning Recurser

Most Recursers are pure software-based programmers. Here are some tips if you plan to attend RC, but are more interested in working on the more embedded/hardware side of things.

Having a programming periphery skill means that you have a lot to teach others — look for people who want to learn. I met some folks working through nand2tetris and got to share my love of ALUs!

If you want to be on top of things, spend the week before RC doing some prep, getting parts, etc.

If you are not on top of things, plan to make a trip to Tinkersphere where you can buy parts in person. Note that they do not have readily accessibly CAD drawings of many of their parts, so you will have to replicate it on your end.

People are excited about Rust! It’s a good opportunity to learn Rust! I bet it would’ve been also a good opportunity to play with MicroPython

Having a successful & fun RC mini experience

Decide what your priority is for RC and focus relentlessly on that

Stick it through the first few days: the first two days at RC were overwhelming and felt like some sort of extended networking event. It gets better once you get the introductions aside I promise!

Be realistic — for me, this meant being honest that my priority was to be rejuvenated by being in this positive environment. This meant that I spent more time connecting with people. I’m lucky that I did get time working on programs.

Sign up to give a mini talk

Go to dessert club. The desserts in NYC are amazing! We went to Spot Dessert Bar

If you can spare it, buy a flexible plane ticket because you will not want to leave. 🙂 I ended up staying a week longer than I expected.